The Plugin Directory: What Should Freemium Product Owners Do About WordPress.org?

[00:00:00] Matt Cromwell: Hey everyone, I'm sure you have been following all of the crazy news of all kinds of drama, and I don't mean the U. S. election. WordPress has been going through a thing for a bit, and it has impacted plugin authors directly. The plugin directory has become ground zero for a lot of interesting work

plugin authors are making different choices, different ways to serve their free plugins, and different ways to, get people to be aware of their offerings. we want to talk about that. if you're a plugin author, this is all for you. Welcome.

This is WP Product Talk, the place where every week we bring you insights, product marketing, business management and growth, customer experience, product development, and more. It's your go to podcast for WordPress product owners by WordPress product owners. And now enjoy the show.

Welcome everyone.

[00:01:14] Amber Hinds: Hey everyone. It's Amber from Equalize Digital

[00:01:20] Matt Cromwell: and Matt from StellarWP.

We're so good at this. Sorry. We don't

[00:01:28] Amber Hinds: always come

[00:01:29] Matt Cromwell: on together.

[00:01:30] Katie Keith: we

[00:01:30] Matt Cromwell: We could

[00:01:30] Katie Keith: And Katie Keith from Barn2 Plugins.

[00:01:33] Amber Hinds: And today we are going to be talking about the WordPress. org directory and how WordPress product owners or product leaders should be thinking about that as part of their marketing or distribution strategies.

And we have a surprise guest that we are going to bring on today as well.

It is Jack!

[00:02:01] Zack Katz: Welcome, Jack. Yeah, Jack, could you please introduce yourself? what do you do?

[00:02:07] Jack Arturo: hi, I'm Jack Arturo. I'm the founder of VeryGoodPlugins. I'm a WordPress plugin developer, and I've been working in WordPress for about 12 years.

[00:02:16] Matt Cromwell: And tell us a little bit about why we wanted you on this conversation today.

[00:02:23] Jack Arturo: I had a viral tweet a few weeks ago. I've been frustrated with, Matt Mullenweg and Automatic for quite a while and feeling like the future of our business has been tenuous because of some decisions They've made, the recent drama after WordCamp US, made me want to do something about it, for a long time, I had been bothered by the fact that WordPress.

com had copied the, public repo of plugins from WordPress. org, and in many cases for our plugin, the, com listing was showing up in search results above the free listing. the major problem with this was, unlike the free. org repo, if somebody clicked through the com listing, they couldn't.

download the plugin for free. there's a button that says get started and then this signs you up to WordPress. com's premium hosting. we would occasionally get customers who would contact our premium support, for example, and say, well, yeah, I signed up for this. I paid for it.

you need to help me. no, you actually paid automatic for VIP hosting. And then they gave you our free plugin as part of that package, You haven't paid us anything. You're still using our free software, which is just community support. this has been an irritant for a little over a year thinking in the back of my mind, what could we do to take back a little bit of control from that and automatic?

And because we own the trademarks to WP Fusion, our code is open source and anybody can copy it, do what they want with it. But we do own the trademark and As Matt says, you have to defend your trademarks. so we can, legally require websites to take down any listing that, displays their trademark in a misleading way.

And I thought this was a pretty clear case of showing our brand alongside a get started button that then gets you to buy something from another company. so we sent a cease and desist letter to Automattic saying that they were infringing our trademark, asking them to take the listing down, five days later, the legal counsel wrote back and said they've done it, they didn't agree with our trademark infringement claim, but they made whatever engineering changes were required, as far as I know, we're the only company.

Yeah, as far as I know, we're the only plugin who's been removed from the dot com repository, but still exists on the free repository. So they did it, and I'm hoping that other plugin authors will do the same thing. And if we can sort of take back some Ownership of our brands and our code and try to keep the free.

org repo, the central place for distribution. maybe that will take away a little bit of the power of automation, it's the only action we could take with guaranteed success. So that's what we did.

[00:04:49] Amber Hinds: It is interesting to hear that there were customers of WordPress.

com who were confused and thought that you had received some amount of what they were paying for their hosting. do you have any way of even knowing what percent of your free users came via WordPress. com or WordPress. org or any way of tracking that currently to know, like, Did it hurt you to leave wordpress.

com?

[00:05:15] Jack Arturo: I don't have any way of knowing for sure. we can track when somebody clicks a link from the free plugin and then comes through and purchases from us. but that link is the same regardless of where they are hosting the plugin. anecdotally, because I still do a lot of support with customers, very, very few use wordpress.

com. it wasn't until. Maybe in the last two years that you could even run custom plugins on WordPress. com. for the longest time, our website just said it doesn't work on WordPress. com. also, keep in mind, we started out as a premium only plugin. we have something like 40, 000 sites using the premium plugin and only 5, 000 using the free one.

I think the percentage of people using it on com is probably very low.

[00:05:57] Matt Cromwell: one more question, and then I want to paint a little bit of the broader context of what we're trying to talk about today. have you done other C Synthesis, like maybe at any of those, GPL club type sites or things like that?

have you thought about doing that kind of thing before?

[00:06:11] Jack Arturo: no, this is the first one, and it made me a little bit nervous because, we've all seen Matt personally retaliate against people for, Even just using an emoji reaction in Slack. so I was assuming I would get banned and blocked from everything and maybe taken down from org.

but nothing got blocked on Twitter. So I don't know, either he hasn't noticed me or he's watching very closely everything I say. I'm not sure which one's worse, no, this was the first one. And I don't really have any problem with the GPL clubs. I have a subscription to help the plugins and it's just too much work to contact every individual autocopy.

they offer our code under the spirit of the GPL. we have taken steps to make it very difficult to, get premium plugins that are available on the GPL sites. They're usually a couple months out of date. customers try it out for free.

Something's broken, they contact us, and we, say, hey, that's not a valid license key. Would you like a discount to Sign up for real. this was just some control back from Automatic. I really can't stand them. this felt like something we could do.

[00:07:16] Matt Cromwell: Got it. That makes sense. cool. So let's talk a little bit about broader context of what we're talking about today. Essentially, like I said in the intro, plugin authors are going to start making different types of decisions for a couple different reasons. We had several incidents happen, that impact plugin authors on the plugin directory on WordPress.

org. The very first one was when a surprise checkbox showed up on WordPress. org. there's lots of places where you can read all about these things, so I'm not going to go and like, Crazy detail or anything, but there is a checkbox that says, I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way. when people asked follow up questions about like, what does this mean?

How would you interpret this? The answer that we got through WordPress Slack was essentially consult your lawyer, which was not very encouraging. it definitely added to the scare factor of what that checkbox meant. there was a lot of plugin authors who were like, I don't feel comfortable logging into WordPress.

org right now, which of course negatively impacts their ability to provide plugins, the next one was that WP Engine, was blocked from being able to access, WordPress. org. all of their customer sites were, disabled from accessing WordPress. org. all of the people who were owners of, the Advanced Custom Fields, plugins specifically, they were also banned from WordPress.

they were not able to log in. and, commit, changes to that plugin or anything like that, and then, shortly after that, Matt and, Automatic decided that, they would, what they said is fork that plugin and call it Secure Custom Fields instead, they took that, repository, as their own.

and called it Secure Custom Fields. there's been a lot of conversation about whether or not that constitutes a legitimate fork but, that is what happened. I think that was an indicator to a lot of plugin authors of essentially, I didn't know that that was in the realm Possibility.

I'm hosting my plugin on this place, and this event happened, and if it could happen to them, could it happen to me? that's a little bit of the shock and awe feeling that a lot of plugin authors had in the wake of that. Then there was also, the situation in which, people started to respond.

Like Jack, in a different way, not necessarily specifically about org. He was trying to emphasize his presence on org and lessen the influence of com specifically. the folks at Paid Memberships Pro, removed their free version from, wordpress. org. and then were approached by Matt Mullenweg, who said I could take over that repo as well, in a way that was like, you know, if you leave here, I might do something like that.

that's how it's been reported in different places. The repository email newsletter reported on that. DM conversations with Jason Coleman and Matt Mullenweg. That's how that's been reported to date. So even those who have made a choice to leave the plugin directory have had some pushback there as well.

So what are plugin authors to do in light of all of these things? is the plugin directory a safe space to continue to host your plugin? Of course, is the, still the preeminent, most obvious, and biggest, funnel. If you have a premium plugin offering that's the best place to get free users.

nothing has changed about that except for the risks, that were not there previously. so, that's how I'm seeing context. Did I miss something?

[00:10:54] Zack Katz: Yeah, before we move on, I want to clarify, what you mean by they forked advanced custom fields, because a fork normally, when you take a plugin and you fork it, you They're supposed to rename the plugins, which they did, but when you fork a plugin and add it to WordPress.

org, you get a new URL. You start from scratch with your user base. You have no reviews or ratings that have, that have been left. but that's not what they did. They took over advanced custom fields, WordPress, plugin directory listing, and they kept all the reviews. They kept all the install base.

they've updated the code that goes to the advanced custom fields users, They took over the code base. In a way that isn't, in my mind, a fork.

[00:11:39] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, and if you had auto updates enabled, then, overnight you went from having advanced custom fields to having secure custom fields, which literally belongs to a different company.

Yes.

[00:11:52] Zack Katz: in my mind, they stole it. They didn't just fork it.

[00:11:55] Amber Hinds: You know what I think is interesting, though? We have Jack here. I wonder if this is a mistake on the original developer of advanced custom fields part of not trademarking advanced custom fields? Because if there's a trademark on that, then they could not have kept the URL or there could be a cease and desist submitted on the URL because that is trademarked.

With regards to custom field plugin software, whatever the trademark would cover. Right.

[00:12:28] Katie Keith: And so there is a trademark pending, but I believe that pending trademarks are enforceable and it does exist. So I'm surprised that hasn't been made more explicit in the latest legal paperwork.

[00:12:42] Amber Hinds: is it one of the first takeaways for all plugin developers? You should trademark the name of your product if you have not done so already.

[00:12:49] Zack Katz: And one of, Mr. Alan Fuller, writes, One issue is that we don't all have trademarks. In my case, my name was deemed too generic. And I've had that same issue as well.

I don't know what that means legally. But I do know that, it doesn't prevent you from trying to have them take it off of WordPress. com.

[00:13:07] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:13:08] Zack Katz: you can still copyright your logo.

[00:13:11] Jack Arturo: Right.

[00:13:11] Amber Hinds: Yeah, so what we did, because our product, Accessibility Checker does the same thing. It's too generic.

We wouldn't be able to trademark it. But the company name Equalize Digital is trademarked. originally when we launched our product, it was just AccessibilityChecker by Equalize. we submitted it just as AccessibilityChecker. So the URL would just be AccessibilityChecker. we had AccessibilityChecker by Equalize Digital, but then we realized that this whole uniqueness and brand recognition, like it's not great to have a.

we switched it and Equalize Digital is always at the front. When we talk about it, people shorten it to Accessibility Checker all the time, but the full name of the product does include our trademark. we've been doing a lot on company name recognition.

So maybe that's something that plugin authors, if they haven't thought about that, and I don't remember off the top of my head, what Alan's product name is, but like, maybe that is something to think about is how can you make the name of your product trademarkable?

[00:14:05] Zack Katz: And Jack brings up a good point that even if your name isn't, trademarkable, your digital appearances are and your graphics and stuff.

your plugin header that WordPress. com is also displaying, you have copyright over that and you can file a copyright claim on that.

[00:14:19] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, I think another important context that came out through all of these conversations, is that WordPress. org Literally belongs to Matt Mullenweg, the person, not to the WordPress Foundation, not to Automattic, but Matt Mullenweg, the person.

in many ways, that to me changed the nature of the conversation a lot. like I just imagined, what if I had mattcromwell. com and it was hosting, all those bajillions of things and I just was like, yeah, I'm just going to kick Zack off because Zack was a jerk to me yesterday. And I could do that.

[00:14:53] Amber Hinds: it's my website.

[00:14:55] Matt Cromwell: I'm just saying, in many ways, you're right. It's not a legitimate fork. There are, trademarked names and images on there. but at the same time, we all volunteered those things onto some guy's personal website. I'm not defending or justifying, but

It really colored the nature of the conversation the thing that jumped out to me immediately was I really wish that would have been a lot more up front and center in the plugin submission process. there's got to be some sort of terms and conditions that names Matt Mullenweg personally, instead of Automatic or Foundation

I had always heard people say, Well, org belongs to Matt. I've heard people say that a lot in the past. I didn't realize that that really actually meant Matt the person and not Matt Automatic. that, to me, changes things a little bit. I don't know if that changes things for you all, in your mind.

what do you think, Jack?

[00:15:48] Jack Arturo: yeah, it changed a lot for me. I got started working with Infusionsoft and ClickFunnels and these tech bro founder types who control their whole ecosystem. it was terrifying, like, you make some money, but they can just kick you out anytime they dislike you.

I liked WordPress as a democratic, egalitarian, open commons kind of thing. if I felt like Matt was running the show, It felt like he was giving everybody a fair chance, so I didn't look too closely at it. now when you realize Matt can change anything about not only WordPress.

WordPress the software if he wanted to. If he decided that Zack's premium plugins, he didn't like Zack anymore, he could make some change to WordPress Core and boot Zack out or break his code. it's really all up to Matt. I think it, changed a lot in my mind.

[00:16:30] Zack Katz: Yeah, and same here. And we're actually in the process of, developing a new product, and trying to figure out where to release this product. And one of the considerations that we've had for GravityKit as well, is that Google has updated their algorithm, majorly. So that's, they're not a reliable partner, and doing SEO is time that you can spend.

developing your product and supporting customers. But, so we were looking at WordPress. org as a hedge against the changes that Google was making. And then Matt has come in and made WordPress. org unreliable as a distribution platform. So we are currently wondering, how do we distribute this software?

in a way that can reach the most people. And, recently we've come down on the side of distributing it for free on our own website instead of relying on WordPress. org. I might change my mind on this because I really don't want to rely on Google. Google has a monopoly on search and WordPress.

org has a monopoly on WordPress. And that is a funny thing to say, but it also has come up recently in things like the Android lawsuits in the EU and that Google has a monopoly over distribution for an open source platform of Android. I would argue it's the same situation with WordPress. org and Automatic having a monopoly over WordPress.

[00:17:57] Matt Cromwell: We're going to get back to Handing out flyers on corners Amber, you had a comment.

[00:18:03] Amber Hinds: Yeah, well, I wanted to see what Katie thought because I know Katie has. A lot of different plugins, I'm curious how you've thought about this, like staying on org or not, or putting new products on org.

[00:18:18] Katie Keith: Yeah, I'm less concerned than many people because we have never been dependent on it as our main distribution channel. So Zack just spoke about not being too reliant on Google, not being too reliant on WordPress. I'd say, yeah, the key is having multiple distribution channels so that if one is less predictable than you thought, then that's okay.

at Barn2, most of our products are premium only, and we do have a few free plugins, several of which we actually introduced after the premium. plug in was already successful simply as a way of getting additional users. we do track quite a few sales through them, but it's a really small proportion of our direct sales because we're good at YouTube marketing, we're good at organic SEO, and we are quite confident in getting our own users through those other channels.

So I'm perfectly happy to still have my plugins on If they were suddenly taken off it wouldn't be the end of the world.

[00:19:19] Amber Hinds: Yeah, that's sort of where we landed as well. we're comfortable with staying on org. I think it's helpful for us to be there. That's the only place right now we're collecting reviews.

I will say we've had a conversation about. Should we collect reviews like on Trustpilot or G2 or something because we ask everyone to go write a review for us on org, there might be arguments about that beyond org just to distribute for broader visibility of reviews or maybe, you know, People don't have a WordPress.

org profile because a lot of our customers maybe don't have one and they'd have to have that to write a review there. we use EDD to allow people to download the free version of our plugin off our website. most of our marketing goes to our website to get either free or paid because I want people to see it all in a pricing table and compared.

so I, I'm not especially worried about. losing it as a marketing channel. but I think it's helpful to be there. And so I wouldn't leave.

[00:20:16] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, absolutely. I want to highlight some of the comments coming in and folks, if you're here listening in, bring in your comments because we'd love to, get you part of the conversation as well.

Corey Moss, he's a great plugin author, several products on WordPress. org. He says, I definitely assumed foolishly that it was all on the up and up and owned by the foundation, meaning the WordPress. org was, which I also foolishly assumed was being used correctly to own all of the main WP assets,

That by uploading his, GPL plugins to WordPress. org that, any of the, GPL rights, were being shared with the foundation. not as Matt Mullenweg personally. and that is part of the confusion I think a lot of folks, were having or the realization a lot of folks had through the due diligence of.

the conversations that were happening in the public between WP Engine and, Matt continually.

[00:21:10] Zack Katz: some other people have talked about Katie and Amber, I believe have talked about that it's kind of low risk. putting your plugin on dot org, if it goes away, you can still somehow keep the, the people, they're using your product, at least that that's better than nothing.

but it's also a big, item in the SWOT analysis when you talk about, opportunities and threats. the threat is that the leader of the software you are based on, has a personal vendetta against you and can take away a whole distribution channel with no warning even though it's an open source project.

So I think by Matt doing what he did, it really changed the calculations that we're doing. All product owners have to take when it talks about building on WordPress in the first place. Forget the plugin directory. Is this software we want to build on? I'd say Matt has done a huge disservice to the platform.

but also is the plugin directory. And, do, do I, as a business want to invest in the plugin directory, considering that that's benefiting an individual in a way that, I might not want to invest in?

[00:22:16] Matt Cromwell: I do want to say that risk, was maybe never so keenly felt in the WordPress space, but that is a risk with ever you, Distribute on a marketplace of any kind.

Apple has done stuff to their podcasters. Google does stuff to their app owners. we don't always get a lot of visibility about whether or not it's, for vindictive reasons or not. what you said, Zack, is totally true. I'm just saying it's also not unique to WordPress, specifically.

Anytime we go to Marketplace, Envato was caught up in all kinds of drama with different plugin authors and theme authors. that's kind of the nature of Marketplace stuff. we never have had to address it in a way that the CEO, the, Dictator for Life, was DMing individual authors, along the way.

That does feel, like a different level, for sure.

[00:23:10] Amber Hinds: We had plans to have, some features that were independent of the plugin, almost SaaS like features, which would, the plugin would still have an option where it would just function as a plugin, but there'd be other things that you would have to do on a separate website because of requests of our customers that are like, we want to see all of our sites all together, or be able to get different reports and things that it just doesn't make sense to run in a WordPress environment.

So I think for us some of the risk, is that people have seen, like, Oh, could my plugin get taken away from me? we haven't felt that as much because we already have some of this in the works where we were already building some features separate from the plugin.

We've had a lot of requests in higher ed to have a Drupal version, which for us, it's like, well, let's just build it. You know, kind of like Yoast did, they made a SaaS that could scan Shopify, and so I think maybe thinking about that bigger, like, can your product go beyond WordPress or be something separate from what's in the free plugin?

If there's only so much that can be taken away from you. But Jack, you probably have thoughts that you want to share also.

[00:24:18] Jack Arturo: I was surprised to learn recently that as a Shopify app developer, you actually retain full commercial copyright to your app.

Shopify can't take it from you. They can create a competitor. I was laughing a bit because it means in a way, the Shopify app directory is safer to launch on than the open source WordPress. org directory.

[00:24:42] Amber Hinds: That is really interesting. I did not know that.

[00:24:46] Katie Keith: This is actually a reason why we're not on the WooCommerce marketplace.

since most of my plugins are WooCommerce, that's a natural place and that's premium only. but if you go through their terms and conditions, they talk about the ability to take over your plugin if you ever try to remove it in the future, they have significantly improved their terms over the last couple of years, and they're far more author friendly than they used to, but that one is still in there, and they've given me some verbal reassurances that they wouldn't just Do that.

But given what has happened with ACF, given the threats made against paid memberships pro, which we should probably talk about a bit more, I am more scared now that they would just take my plugins. Like say I did a trial for a few months on the WooCommerce marketplace, didn't sell very well, so I would remove it.

Well, they can just take my plugin and I know it's GPL and all that, but this goes a bit beyond that.

[00:25:45] Matt Cromwell: Peter Ingersoll in the comments here echoing what you're saying How scary must it be that Matt Mullenweg Automatic could, and now might, fork your livelihood? That's putting it, very directly, I think.

Yeah. So let's talk about, Paid Memberships Pro, and the route that they have gone they actually said in an announcement that they had already planned for a long time to start hosting their free plugin, off of WordPress. org, for a variety of reasons. partially because of the risk that org had innately by itself.

and so this was a consideration for them long before any of the WordPress engine, stuff actually flared up in the first place. but then once it did flare up, they were like, okay, let's pull this trigger right now. they are, hosting the plugin now on their website, and serving updates there.

that's a choice they made. I've actually had some fun conversations with Alex Denning in the past about how to get different benefits to, freemium model and driving traffic, to pro only offerings. And how challenging that is, from a marketing perspective, versus having the natural, funnel that WordPress.

org is for so many people. Jason and Kim, at PaidMembershipsPro obviously felt that they were in a spot where they can afford to do direct to market marketing, and didn't need, the marketplace of WordPress. org in order to continue to be successful with their product. I think that's really fascinating and interesting.

that's a choice that plugin authors are making. Zack, what do you think about that?

[00:27:19] Zack Katz: this connects nicely with a question that Jeff Chandler has in the chat, which is, what is a new plugin author to do if they don't want to use the official directory? That's a good question.

one of the things you learn is you want to own your, distribution it used to be that we would just put free plugins on. org and leave it alone. Recently we've been doing free and having a free version on our own website. I think that the trend is going to be.

Having distribution through your own website. leads to the question, how are you going to get found? And I think that that is going to be the question that people need to solve. the answer is going to go through hosts more and more where the hosts are going to have some sort of, partnership programs that are going to be way more active than they have been, you will have to reach out to the hosts, connect to them, have your plugin as a recommended solution for whatever your plugin does.

I feel like that might be a direction that WordPress goes as we get more fractured due to the org no longer being the reliable distribution partner that it is. even if you're on org, you're not on WordPress. You're not on WP Engine,

[00:28:28] Matt Cromwell: WordPress. I want to caveat that just a little bit, because there's always in the scope of these conversations as product owners, there's always this sense in which, we feel a certain pressure in a way that, 98 percent of all of our users don't.

WordPress. org is not reliable anymore. I don't feel like I can say that with authority. I feel like there are some new risks in hosting there, for sure, that people should be aware of and make their own choices. But I don't know that I personally can say That authoritatively, that it is not the de facto place.

There's millions and millions of people who are still downloading their plugins there every single day right now. I just want to caveat that a little bit.

[00:29:11] Zack Katz: I wouldn't disagree with that, but I also think that the stability of the marketplace has changed fundamentally.

[00:29:18] Matt Cromwell: the issue of fracturing the general marketplace, yeah. if we end up going through hosts for our plugins, that's a scary reality. because I'm on Bluehost, I get secure hosted fields and because I'm on WP Engine, I get advanced custom fields.

they're like the same thing, but they're not the same thing. I don't even know that secure custom fields exist. If I'm on WP Engine and vice versa, that's a weird siloed, place. I don't love the idea that I only know about plugins because of my web host. I don't feel that's in the best interest of the WordPress ecosystem overall.

I love the ability. I love the benefits that org has traditionally given of letting plugin authors go direct to market as much as possible. I will say though, that so many plugin founders are. Developers, first and foremost, and marketing is their Achilles heel.

going like direct to users, only, tends to not be a, a high success rate. I'm looking at some of the exceptions to that. Katie and Jack in particular are really good at going direct to customers. but, yeah, that's a complicated, needly subject for sure.

[00:30:25] Amber Hinds: I think that the hosting partnership, that's like the holy grail, right?

we've been in conversations with multiple hosts about, can you on a certain plan, auto install our free plugin? Right. We've been trying really hard for multiple years. Hasn't happened yet. Had some really great conversations. Maybe it's on the path to happening,

So I don't know if that is the total solution. I did just see Brian Gardner. pop into the chat, and I would be curious if he could, share something with us related to how WP Engine giving, Genesys themes away has helped. in the beginning, did that help with distribution?

I think, Jack, you could speak to this, and Zack also, is Partnering with other plugins that serve the same audience. Jack, obviously there's a lot of, CRMs or other software that you could co market with.

And Zack, a lot of your stuff works with GravityForms, which is interesting because you're in their directory I have no idea what their rules are for being in their directory. But I feel like product owners need to find. These plugins or others or themes or whatever that work either in tandem or connect very clearly with your product and build a marketing coalition where you can co market together.

do you have any thoughts on that?

[00:31:45] Jack Arturo: Yeah, I agree. not every plugin can go the integrations route, but, we had a lot of success with that, it wasn't until six or seven years into Deity Fusion that we even released a version for free. I think that

[00:31:57] Amber Hinds: how were you getting customers before you had a free version?

[00:32:00] Jack Arturo: Luck, mostly just luck. Good timing.

[00:32:03] Amber Hinds: SEO

[00:32:05] Jack Arturo: GravityForms was aware of us and would send customers to us. HubSpot was aware of us. we were listed in the Infusionsoft marketplace and the ActiveCampaign marketplace.

for plugins that we integrate with, we would try to get them to. list compatibility on their websites. we have a new customer survey that goes out after someone purchases to get a sense of which of our marketing channels are working. And in the last three years, no one has ever selected the option for WordPress.

So I think it's nice for us to be able to show that we have a few thousand users using it. And I also think it's really nice to have a, independent place to have reviews, but there are other options for that. I don't know of anybody who's recently just released a plugin onto the repo and suddenly gotten users from it.

there's so many on there, and it's really nice. It's not really an organic marketing channel. I don't think it's as indispensable as some people think it is.

[00:32:56] Amber Hinds: So someone who had access to plugin search results they worked at a hosting company. I asked them can you tell me if people are searching for the name of my product or whatever?

they looked at the data for all of the searches that happen in dashboard. On websites that host there. And what they said to me was no, then they went and looked and they're like, people also don't search for SEO plugin. They go and search the name of the plugin.

They already want to install like Yoast or RankMath And their takeaway from this is that people go to Google to try and figure out what plugin to use. And then once they have figured out the plugin, they will go get it off Org maybe, or out of their website. They're not using wordpress.org or WordPress plugin directory for discovery of plugins,

[00:33:51] Matt Cromwell: which, goes back to your, point about, that's why it's a good idea to get on G two or Trustpilot, or Capterra, because that is the spot where discovery happens for that.

[00:34:01] Zack Katz: then when you go on these platforms like G two. Underneath your product, it says alternatives to your product.

[00:34:09] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:34:09] Zack Katz: So you don't own that platform

[00:34:11] Matt Cromwell: Same thing with org, you search SEO and it's like, well, here's all my competitors I hope I show up here.

[00:34:21] Katie Keith: Yeah. I think as a marketer, you need to be in as many places as possible.

And we can't assume that all users are the same. I installed a plugin from searching. On WordPress. org yesterday. I tend to do that when I want a free, very simple plugin, I needed a maintenance mode plugin. So I knew I wasn't going to pay or spend hours researching.

I just needed something to do the job. And I'm sure there are many other use plugins on. org. So I'd say it is important to be there if that fits with your overall strategy, but you should absolutely not. Just be there. You should do your own direct marketing. You should be on hosts if you can. I know that's the holy grail, like Amber said, and no one's nailed it yet, but they must one day.

Everyone's been trying for so long. That will become more of a thing. You should be on other directories. You should be everywhere you can and WordPress. org for some people might be one of those places.

[00:35:20] Matt Cromwell: absolutely. I can shout out

[00:35:23] Amber Hinds: if you want more marketing advice, you should go to wpproducttalk.

com. we have had tons of episodes that talk about this and there are a lot of really good episodes

[00:35:31] Matt Cromwell: I love it. we did one about

[00:35:34] Katie Keith: for Envato sellers with Vova Feldman about people that previously used the Envato marketplace, what do they do now that's declining, that's really relevant to people that were previously reliant on WordPress.

org and need to find other ways to market.

[00:35:50] Matt Cromwell: yeah, so we talked about a few different things. We talked about, alternative directories, a bit. We talked about going pro. We talked about risks in, and what might happen if you leave. I do want to, caveat all of these things.

I do think in many ways this incident that we've been watching unfold in public is exceptional. I have a hard time imagining that something with the significance of, Mullenweg versus, WP Engine, or Mullenweg versus Silverlake, the private equity firm behind WP Engine, would resurface again, and greatly impact different plugin authors.

And I think that's also really important to acknowledge because it's not as if we're saying that, this kind of thing is happening everywhere all the time to all plugin authors. This is not a big, giant, vast issue. But what changed the nature of that conversation was we could say, oh, it's isolated to just this group of people and like, oh man, that really super sucks for all the WP Engine folks and the WP Engine plugins, but doesn't impact.

I think some of us maybe felt that way, thought that way, until Paid Memberships Pro was like, okay, we're going to get out. And then it was like, oh no, there's some retribution there. That changed the tone of the whole situation again, in many ways. I think it is really important for us to start really talking more, clearly about how does this whole thing impact, new plugin authors and what new folks are going to be doing going forward.

I'll just say real quick, and I want to hear from other folks, that, my first inclination is simply that there's going to be a whole lot more folks who do pro only. honestly, in the WordPress space, there haven't been a lot of super highly successful people. Pro only, products.

the biggest one that stands out in my mind has been GravityForms, who has been pro only since day one, for a really long time. Shortly before WordCamp US, they shipped a new free SMTP plugin to org, specifically for lead gen purposes. they saw the value of org, even for them who have been pro only for, I don't know, 12 years?

10, 14 years? They've been around a long time. so I think we'll start to see a bigger rise in that kind of, Product model, business model, that means if you are a developer founder and you're like, I'm really good at code, and I love to build stuff, your first order of business is partnering up with a marketer.

you can't just, Build something awesome and be successful. build something awesome, build a website and immediately have sales. It's just not in the cards at all. so that's my short take. Actually, we haven't heard a ton from Katie. So I'd love to hear, Katie, what's your take?

how does this going to impact new plugin authors going forward?

[00:38:41] Katie Keith: Yeah, it's an interesting dilemma for new plugin authors because they need that distribution. don't be too scared of org. obviously try not to piss off Matt Mullenweg if you're going to list a plugin on there, but, you know, platform's perfect.

there's the whole open source thing. And some say you shouldn't be listing on proprietary platforms if you're using things that aren't WordPress. So. There's always a risk with every kind of platform that you might risk on, and there are risks with org, but you've got to balance that against the audience that you get which you can't replicate simply by having your plugin on your own website, even if it's free.

So I'd say, yes, put it on org if freemium is part of your ideal business model, but, think about ways to protect yourself. I love what Amber said about having a SaaS component to your free product. we've done, two previous episodes of WP Product Talk about SaaSifying a WordPress product.

if there is something which has to call home for it to work I think WP Fusion does that as well, in some sense. people. can't just fork it and take it over. It simply wouldn't work. So there are clever things you can do, to have your cake and eat it and continue getting those benefits of being on org.

[00:40:00] Zack Katz: Yeah. And I also think that org remains a great distribution option and there's lots of value provided by org, including reviews and having a support forum. And that is why it's been so important in the past. but I think more now than ever, it's important to own your customer. And what do I mean by that?

I mean, if you have a plugin on org. You need to market inside your plugin and convert your users to being your users, your customers, not Matt Mullenweg's and WordPress. org's customers. And that means, adding email signup forms inside your plugin, maybe adding banners that let people know, like, sign up here, get additional value from your plugin by subscribing to your newsletter list.

You need to have your customers email. Otherwise you don't own the customer Matt Mullenweg does.

[00:40:52] Matt Cromwell: that's actually a good point, because another interesting model in the freemium space is, not freemium necessarily, but free and pro. meaning that when you install a pro plugin, it uninstalls the free one.

there's not a lot of folks who do that. solid security is one of them. you install the pro version, it automatically uninstalls And now you only have the pro one. and what that means is that negatively impacts your active install count but, as soon as they've installed that pro version, It's just you and you're running your updates from your own website.

and then you really are just using org as, a free tool. they're full featured, free plugins still. but then once you get that sale, you own that customer now, in a way that you can't, if you have a free with, A pro add on or a free with a whole bunch of add ons.

so that's also maybe a model that might crop up a lot more, right now. It's a good point. Amber, what about you?

[00:41:57] Amber Hinds: About owning customers?

[00:41:59] Matt Cromwell: how do you think all of this impacts, what plugin authors will choose to do? what are plugin authors going to choose when they're brand new and they're like, should I go on org? Yes or no?

[00:42:09] Amber Hinds: It's hard because we're starting to see more articles outside of just WordPress news sites.

I still feel like a year from now it might all be resolved and somebody who is brand new to plugin development might just launch on WordPress. org, because they want, I mean, that's kind of been our approach with a lot of this is like, let's just focus on making a really great product and see how it shakes out we care about building an accessible web and making an awesome product.

And that's what we've been focusing on. I still have things I'm going to be contributing to the accessibility team because I really care about the accessibility team and I'm logging in because I want to help make things accessible. It's hard to say, like it feels huge right now, but I don't feel like we're at a point now where we have to make this big decision of abandoning ship or totally changing course on your product and roadmap and everything you had planned.

it feels huge, but it's really only been a number of weeks ago that this all started. I, feel like let's see how it shakes out and, focus on making good products. New plugin devs, if they're launching right now, they might be thinking about doing something different.

If they come six months from now, they might do what everyone has been doing What do you think, Jack? Do you think new plugin devs are going to be doing something different or should be doing something different?

[00:43:32] Jack Arturo: the frustrating thing to me about all this is it's all very important to us now and we make a big stink and we file our cease and desist and we go on our podcasts and in six months nobody will care and Matt will still be in charge of everything and people who are new to developing plugins will want the free distribution and they'll sign away whatever rights they have to and tick any boxes to get that.

I don't really see anything changing, unfortunately.

[00:44:01] Matt Cromwell: It's hard not to, get into that. I hate to call it pessimism. I don't think it is pessimism. It's just kind of like acknowledging, where we're at, it's hard not to, stay in that mindset, but like Amber said, I'm still really motivated by the fact that WordPress is supposed to be open source and that we're trying to make the web better overall.

that's the vision, and we're all trying to contribute to that as much as possible, but it's sometimes hard to see the forest through the trees. Sorry, Zack, you were saying?

[00:44:29] Zack Katz: Oh, I'm sorry, Matt. I think the WP Engine lawsuit might force Automatic and WordPress. com, to restore people's access and restore ACF to their rightful slug on the WordPress.

org repo. that is the best hope in the sense that there's no other way the Plugin directory remains fair? I don't know. That is the big question mark for me, is what happens with a lawsuit? How does it shake out? Because I think that that will guide, how the directory feels for me personally.

[00:45:05] Matt Cromwell: that makes sense. I want to jump in. Go ahead.

[00:45:10] Amber Hinds: I was going to highlight. that, we had Louis, said, what about GitHub as a distribution for freemium? And maybe we could touch on that real quick here. Does that feel like a good solution to people?

[00:45:23] Matt Cromwell: You know, the hard part about that, is, there also has been some changes, in, the way that they accept plugins on org.

they're not accepting plugins on org now that support other update models. they specifically targeted, GitHub, updater, from Andy Fragan, Andy Fragan wrote, an article about that. and he's been contributing to WordPress for a really long time. and said that he's all done.

Like if WordPress. org isn't supportive of, his, free plugin with no paid options. Actually, he did launch a paid option recently, then he's like, ah, I don't think I can contribute to this project the way I was anymore. So, that used to be a really viable way, a really viable option.

but now that's become less of an option as well.

[00:46:07] Amber Hinds: I think it's possible over the next three to six months, we are going to see a drop in free plugins going on to org. sometimes you ask those questions anyway, right? Like, how much do I want to support this? We have plugins that we make available on our GitHub because we don't want to have to support

[00:46:29] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:46:30] Amber Hinds: And we'll tell people about them. if you're using X plugin, we have a plugin on our GitHub that will fix the accessibility issues in that plugin. You can go install it, but there's no warranty or guarantee of support

Whereas with some of this drama, In the community, people that never intended to monetize something might think twice before they contribute it. they'll just keep it on GitHub. because they don't want to have to deal with that hassle.

And if they also knew they were never going to monetize it. So, it'd be interesting to see what that, those plugins and themes.

[00:47:03] Zack Katz: One question I have about this whole situation is how, for acquisitions, WordPress. org installs, were used as a good indicator for how much a free plugin might be worth.

You would say perhaps a dollar per user and a free plugin or 2 per user. But now that the user accounts are going to be unreliable, how does that affect, product owners when they're going to try to sell their plugin? if you don't have your own metrics, built in, if you don't collect your users, That is all just gone.

[00:47:37] Matt Cromwell: What's ironic about that is there was a bunch of WP drama around those numbers a while back. the Active Install graph that showed a timeline of your growth was removed from one day to the next with no announcement whatsoever.

[00:47:51] Zack Katz: And

[00:47:53] Matt Cromwell: the justification for why it was removed is because Those numbers aren't accurate, or reliable.

that was the argument that was made there. So it's kind of like, well, they never have been, but they are because you're right, Zack, people have acquired a hundred percent free plugins based only on the active install count alone. so, I mean, who decides whether or not the numbers are valuable

[00:48:16] Zack Katz: What do you think, Jack?

[00:48:19] Jack Arturo: I was going to add regarding releasing plugins on the repo at all, we have about a dozen free plugins that are just on GitHub, if you release it on the repo and don't update it with every WordPress release, people get that notice that says, warning, this hasn't been tested.

There's stuff that is a few lines of code and does the job and never needs an update. so we don't add anything new to the repo, and I know lots of other people who do the same. It would be interesting to see somebody find a way to, create a directory out of all those plugins on GitHub and somehow track the install counts or something, or make a standard way for us to share information about a plugin on GitHub.

[00:48:55] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:48:56] Zack Katz: And I anticipate that WP Engine will, if I were WP Engine, I would try to take a leadership role in transparency around those numbers.

[00:49:07] Matt Cromwell: I think it's important to acknowledge a little bit of the context for folks who might not understand the nuance of that question that Zack raised. one of the WP Engine had to Create a mirror of org in order to service those plugins correctly to their hosted users.

and, that has technical implications for, the numbers represented on WordPress. org in terms of active installs. there are potentially, other conversations happening. about, other types of hosts, considering something like that, to avoid the risks involved in serving customers from WordPress.

there's also been a couple of different, independent folks who have created their own, Public Mirrors. I'm failing on the one that actually got a little bit of traffic recently, from one developer. he built a mirror really quick after all of this happened.

[00:49:56] Jack Arturo: AspirePress is a bigger one.

AspirePress?

[00:50:00] Matt Cromwell: yep. that was the second one. There was another one that came out before that. Was it the BlogVault

[00:50:05] Katie Keith: guy?

[00:50:06] Matt Cromwell: Yes, the BlogVault guy. Exactly. Ash

[00:50:09] Katie Keith: Cattles.

[00:50:11] Matt Cromwell: Exactly. I'm forgetting the name of the mirror that he created. but as these things come up, it does have implications for, active install count.

I was curious about that. And, my co hosts were helping me understand the more technical nuances of that.

[00:50:25] Amber Hinds: So this is a thing that we've talked about already before this, because of that active install graph going away, is trying to figure out what is the thing that we can provide of value that will get that email address and also get us plug in or install data that we can own on our free users?

I think Yoast's new plug in Progress Planner is a really neat example of this because they've built something out that sends emails and people can opt in to get email reminders.

And they built that with the WordPress. site as well, but that is a way that if you get the free plugin, you're like, Oh yeah, of course I want this feature. And it provides value to the user, but then you get their email address. And you get, the data from their WordPress website as well. So that's something that we were already thinking about.

I think if you're not thinking about that with your plugin, it's like, how can you provide value that will encourage free people? then you will not have to worry about, figuring out active install account from WordPress. org plus active install account from WP Engine, plus whatever other hosts or other mirrors might be out there, you can just have your source of truth on the data and actually be able to track your growth and have what you need if you get to a point where you want to sell.

[00:51:49] Matt Cromwell: Jack has been so gracious, he's actually on vacation, and he's in Rome right now, which is amazing. I couldn't say no. I feel like I need to, pay an invoice or something.

[00:52:00] Zack Katz: tiramisu.

[00:52:01] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, some big gifts or whatnot for being here. We really appreciate it.

But before you take off, Jack, the thing we always sign off with on this show is what's your best advice for new product owners in light of this whole conversation. They're a brand new person who's like, I am building my business on WordPress right now.

And they're like, WTF, Jack, what am I supposed to do now?

[00:52:24] Amber Hinds: And this is an elevator,

[00:52:26] Jack Arturo: I didn't prepare anything. Well, I guess to tie it into what we were saying earlier, the WordPress community is still amazing, even if the future of automatic or org are uncertain.

I think the best thing you can do as a product owner is make connections with other product owners. We were talking about cross promoting, create a product that, helps other products work better, integrates with other products, or extends them, and Yeah, by networking with people in that way, it's a really great way to meet people, get advice, get invited on podcasts, get, organic SEO growth and get referrals

I think there's still a lot of opportunities for new products, that work like that.

[00:53:05] Matt Cromwell: Jack, thanks so much for your time. Thanks for being here. We really appreciate all you do.

[00:53:10] Jack Arturo: Good luck.

[00:53:10] Amber Hinds: Thank you.

[00:53:11] Matt Cromwell: there's a couple really good comments I want to jump in here. We asked the folks in the comments about, what their best advice for product authors are as well.

They also have chimed in about several of the, different points that we have been highlighting. One here, a while back, Alan Fuller, was talking about, highlights that what I was saying earlier about if you get a free install from org and then you pay and get the pro version, you could swap out the free one for the pro and now all of a sudden you own that customer more and you have a tighter relationship.

He highlighted, that the way Freemius is set up, if you use Freemius for your paid offerings, They swap out the free version for the pro automatically. I had forgotten about that. good call out there, Alan. Peter Ingersoll chimes in that it's bothersome to him as a customer and supporter, a meetup organizer, is the disingenuous representation of the situation from Matt Mullenweg resulting in a lot of uncertainty and general ickiness.

there's a lot of expressions out there talking about whether or not this is the case. What's interesting to me is that Matt's had multiple avenues and multiple opportunities to clarify his position. he's basically reinstated his position at every single opportunity.

He had a big, interview on TechCrunch, where the interviewer asked a lot of these questions directly. he reinstated exactly what he's been telling us the whole time. whether it's disingenuous or simply his position At least he's consistent about it,

there's a good conversation about, GitHub as a distribution or freemium model. Amber highlighted this earlier, and several folks are chiming in about that. Corey Moss says the disadvantage of self hosting like GitHub is, the discovery aspect.

that is part of it for sure. While GitHub exists on the web just like org exists on the web and you could search and, and it's, it has pretty decent SEO, it doesn't rake anywhere near good enough, for the WordPress specific terms, compared to WordPress. org. although I do see GitHub repos popping up, here and there, with some regular searches, I do think it's harder for sure.

[00:55:13] Amber Hinds: I think it all comes down to marketing. You have to have a solid marketing strategy for your product.

[00:55:19] Matt Cromwell: and

[00:55:20] Amber Hinds: it's so core because it could be an amazing product, but if people can't find it or haven't heard of it, then you're not going to get the growth you need to be able to maintain it.

[00:55:30] Matt Cromwell: another person who left. org was Bill Erickson. He, had a couple of functionality plugins, not paid things at all. he develops them on GitHub completely. When he left. org, he just pointed everybody to GitHub. he's like, here's where you can download my latest stuff all the time.

[00:55:44] Zack Katz: One of the things you can do when you're trying to figure out how to get around org like changes and marketing your own plugin is to look at what other people do. What you can do is look at, is what WordPress and Automatic themselves do, and they promote their own plugins at the top of the WordPress.

org plugin search from inside WordPress itself. And I know that some plugins have done this, including Yoast, I believe did this at some point where if somebody searches for SEO. They might suggest their plugin ahead of other results if they already have a solution that matches closely. I think Jetpack also does this and modifies the search results.

in the past, I would have said that was unethical. Now I think it's strategically sound. it makes sense especially in distributing premium plugins that aren't on org and you want to make sure that your other premium plugins get found that aren't on org. Modify the search results and put them in there.

let people know that you have solutions available. So when you look at that as an example, look at other people, what they're doing, how they're promoting their own plugins outside of org to get inspired on your own strategies.

[00:56:54] Matt Cromwell: Interesting. that is also a past WP drama issue from years ago when Jetpack was overtly changing the search results and got called out on it strongly.

They did revert those changes. now there's a new one where if you have, a backup plugin installed, and, you do a search a badge says, you already have a backup solution, and it's Jetpack Backups.

that one's, an interesting one. I'm gonna throw in a couple more comments about the GitHub issue it's a fun, back and forth happening here in the comments. Stephanie Hudson, a former guest and now a StellarWP employee, says, I'm a GitHub noob. How would I search, find plugins that are available there?

we have folks being, helpful. Corey is saying, Stephanie, that's the problem. How do you find stuff there at all? and we also have, Femi, YB says, you probably have to know what you are searching for before finding, it in the GitHub repo, which is kind of what happens on org as well.

Like that folks are generally finding the product they're looking for anyway, and then they go to org. You could do that with GitHub, but I will say overall, Sometimes I'm looking for something specific on GitHub, and it's super hard to find the right repo.

[00:58:05] Zack Katz: I put in there that you can also search GitHub.

GitHub has a repo search, and I use that a lot. Kind of like I would use the wordpress.org repo for finding integrations that already exist or code samples that already exist. You can search repos. so that is technically a possibility.

[00:58:21] Amber Hinds: Make sure that the zip you download is actually a built zip.

[00:58:26] Zack Katz: you can't just install it and forget about it.

[00:58:28] Amber Hinds: Well, no, no, not that. I mean, like our accessibility checker plugin, we have a build script that compiles it and turns it into a functional zip that someone can use. If you were to go. To our repo and click the button. It's like download z

[00:58:45] Zack Katz: download.

[00:58:46] Amber Hinds: be a functional plugin. ?

[00:58:47] Zack Katz: No. it really depends

[00:58:48] Amber Hinds: on the plugin, whether it's actually gonna work.

[00:58:51] Zack Katz: What we do on our GitHub repos that are public, we tag the releases with versions, and then on the release tag we also upload a compiled zip that has the built zip.

That doesn't need a composer installer or an MPM installer or anything like.

[00:59:05] Amber Hinds: it might not be as straight as download the main branch.

[00:59:11] Matt Cromwell: Let's jump into best advice. We'll kick it off with a comment here from Alan Fuller. What's your best advice for new product owners who are thinking about how they're going to get distribution in general?

Alan Fuller says, my best advice to new plugin developers, mention before build. mentioned before, it was mentioned before, that we should build a SaaS and use a NAT, I think he means nominal, free plugin to integrate to WordPress and other platforms. basically a connector of sorts.

that means that you still want that connector to be found on, org. if you, For one reason or another, get restricted from org It's easy to promote just the connector on your own website. it doesn't avoid the risk, but I think it minimizes the risk a bit.

it does make you a lot more direct to customer oriented marketing again. which continues to be a little bit of a touch point here. Like Amber said, go to WPProductTalk. com. Lots of marketing insights there. Should we wrap up

[01:00:12] Amber Hinds: with our best advice?

[01:00:14] Matt Cromwell: Amber, you first.

What's your best advice for new product owners?

[01:00:18] Amber Hinds: So, two. One, well, I guess the new product owner advice is what I said before, which is you need to figure out how to Provide value so that you can gain email addresses if you are starting with a freemium model and using some other distribution channel than your own.

And this applies equally to you if you're distributing off GitHub or anything other than your website. and my general best advice is that I think we should all take a breath and don't jump too rapidly to making dramatic changes in your product based upon what has happened in the last two months.

[01:00:56] Zack Katz: You know,

[01:00:57] Amber Hinds: you know what you're doing to build awesome stuff. Stay the course. Don't freak out. It will be okay.

[01:01:07] Matt Cromwell: I like it. Katie, what about you?

[01:01:10] Katie Keith: I've already given my best advice about having multiple distribution channels. So instead, I'm going to give a really specific tip that fits with what we said earlier that we haven't covered, which is one way to own your customer data for some of your free users,

when you have your link to your free plugin on your website, even if it goes to wordpress. org, collect their email address first. And that way, when you are the one that's referring those free users from your own site, you get their details and can send them marketing emails

GDPR and all that, of course. you can still own some of the data for free users.

[01:01:46] Zack Katz: Yeah. And regardless of whether or not you have a plugin on. org, always have. Also on your website. we have some plugins on WordPress. org and we offer them for free on our website. and we actually point the zip directly to WordPress.

org, zip file. So when we update it on org, it updates on our website. So that's our way of allowing people to go through our checkout flow and opt into our newsletter and all that stuff. while also. Maintaining some control over the customer, interaction.

It's some advice, in another way to get, people to your website that I historically have thought is terrible. why would anybody do this remove your changelog and have a link to your website. That is one of the huge things that I always look for whenever WordPress plugins and updated what's with the changelog, I open the changelog.

It's all right there in WordPress. It's so handy. If that were going to a website, that would at least get me to your website if you're the person who's doing this. So that's an option that I hadn't really considered before, but I think it might be another way to get people to realize that you are a brand, and establish a relationship with your customers.

[01:02:57] Matt Cromwell: Nice. Appreciate it. Even if it's just your B minus advice, that's fine. for me, mine is learn marketing deeply. that has been a theme for us for a long time already. and it's only gotten more important and necessary, for any product owners to be expert marketers.

at this stage, even if you do host on.org, it's important that you know how to get, your brand in front of people if there is any risk to you and your product on.org in any way, if you're already, strong on the marketing front, it minimizes the impact if you do get restricted from.org.

So, learn marketing deeply as they say. Nice. Man, this was a great discussion. We definitely have gone beyond our normal time limit and, it was great. All the comments here today, everyone. Thanks so much for being here. we are going to sign off. We do have an episode coming up next week. I have to check.

I've got it.

[01:03:58] Amber Hinds: tune in next week for our next episode from zero to SEO hero building organic growth for WordPress products with Alex Mollusk.

[01:04:09] Matt Cromwell: That's a perfect topic on the tail end of this. That's what everybody needs to work on.

[01:04:13] Amber Hinds: to give our thanks.

[01:04:15] Matt Cromwell: Special thanks to Postatus for being our green room. Everybody, if you haven't already, go check out WPProductTalk. com. Find us on YouTube. Hit the subscribe button. Hit the like button. Those things do help us a ton. find us on your favorite podcast platform. We're all over those too.

They have reviews too. don't make us so dependent on one outlet either. We're in all kinds of places. thanks so much for being here. Have a great week. We'll see you all next week. Thanks everybody. Bye.